


Here By My Side (A New Color to Paint the World)

by maddieaddam



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Accidental Cuddling, Closeted Character, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s01e07 The Breaking Point, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, One-Sided Attraction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-29
Updated: 2017-06-29
Packaged: 2018-11-21 05:23:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11350761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maddieaddam/pseuds/maddieaddam
Summary: When the class clown and the emotional caretaker of Easy Company take stock after Bois Jacques, it's surprisingly easy for them to smile thanks to the good company.





	Here By My Side (A New Color to Paint the World)

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work of fiction inspired by and only intended to represent the roles played in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers. No disrespect is meant to the real men of Easy Company.
> 
> What happened here? Exactly what appears to have happened here: I wrote a giftfic for a friend and it dragged me right into a new pairing obsession. Title is from Weapon by Matthew Good.

No one could really accuse Luz of eavesdropping on the conversation between Lip and Easy’s new CO - at least not unless they were spectacularly unobservant, because he’s been watching since the moment they first started to exchange looks, which must qualify him as an outright rubbernecker at this point.

It’s all happening out in the open, though, so as intimate as the little scene feels from Luz’s vantage point, he doesn’t feel too guilty when Speirs walks away and Lip’s gaze immediately moves back to where he’s stretched out on the pew where they were sat when it started. 

“The man’s not wrong,” Luz says as he pulls his legs back up to make room again. He doesn’t quite realize that he’s saying it to tease Lip until he notices the awkward, tentative grin on Lip’s mouth deepen and feels a swell of warmth in his chest at the sight. “C’mon, you’re almost there. Smile a little bigger and it’ll _almost_ look like _maybe_ you believe a word of that.”

“He overstated it,” Lip sighs, sitting back down and earning himself a swift but gentle kick in the thigh as soon as he’s settled. “George, he did. It’s not – unfairly humble to say that I didn’t do as much as a good CO would’ve done for -”

“That’s because you’re _not_ a CO!” 

Several heads turn in surprise at Luz’s outburst, including those of a few of the Sisters; feeling especially chastised by the stares of the latter, he lowers his voice and bites back the _Jesus Christ_ that would otherwise have opened his next statement. 

“You did ten times as much as an NCO shoulda had to do, and that’s what Superman there was talking about.” Lip’s struggle to keep from smiling even more broadly is so plain on his face that George lets out a snort of laughter. “What, can’t I make fun of him? Not even the competent ones are fair game now?" Sweeping the front of his hair across his forehead to try and recreate Speirs's perfectly waved fringe, he intones: " _You know, First Sergeant, just because I’m devastatingly handsome and smooth doesn’t mean I can’t also be the most fearsome bastard this side of the Atlantic -_ ”

Luz’s impression of Speirs leaves Lip with a hand clapped over his mouth to keep from laughing too loudly, and God, he hasn’t felt this good about making someone laugh in as long as he can remember. Considering he’s kept up the habit through this entire war, he feels like that says something. 

“Stop it,” Lip wheezes with a helpless flap of his free hand, but then the laughter dissolves into a wet, wracking cough that makes George sit up in alarm. 

“Lip, you alright?” He rests a hand tentatively on Lip’s upper arm, trying not to notice how small and stubby his own fingers look against one of those massive biceps. All the oversized winter gear that makes most of them look like kids playing around in their dad’s closet actually manages to emphasize Lip’s sheer size, and George will be damned if he thinks that’s any kind of fair. 

“Fine.” As if Lip would ever answer otherwise, George thinks with a prickle of annoyance that he knows stems completely from fondness. “Maybe I’m just not used to smoking yet.”

“Yeah, and maybe you got that cough Babe had in Bastogne, remember that? You could be halfway across the forest and hear him barkin’ away in his foxhole.”

“He came out of that alright, didn’t he?”

“He also carries the Doc around in his back pocket.”

Lipton blinks in surprise and George realizes that was too much. Even for the company jester there have to be limits, and while the amusement with which he regards a few of the close friendships around him is all good-natured in his own mind, any jokes that lean too heavily on his suspicions are more likely to be taken as accusations. Worst-case scenario, they might be _acted on_ as accusations.

Of course, Lip wouldn’t be the one to do something like that, but his frank confusion at the joke serves as a good reminder that calling any of the men ‘too close’ isn’t actually comedy; it’s only funny to Luz because he chooses to look at it through ironic lenses, and that’s only to protect himself from the longing for anyone else like him which probably drives his too-curious observations in the first place.

“Point is, Lip -”

“I know what the point is, George,” Lip says, his voice warm enough to keep his words from sounding like a rebuke. “And thank you for it, but you know I can only do so much to fight off something like pneumonia if that’s what it is.”

“Yeah. I know.” 

Luz’s expression at that must be more solemn than he realizes, because it causes Lip to tilt his head slightly to one side and nudge their shoulders together. When he leans back into his own space, Luz feels himself follow after and press close against Lip’s side without any real awareness that he was the one who made it happen. Must be the exhaustion finally catching up with him, he thinks, then offers up a quick thanks to the man of the house that it came when so many of the other men are using one another as more comfortable pillows than the bare pews. Nothing about this should raise a single eyebrow.

Lip curling an arm around his shoulders and resting a hand on his thick, wildly overgrown hair, however, _does_ raise an eyebrow: two, to be exact, and they’re Luz’s own.

“Why don’t you give your lungs a rest instead of worrying about mine?” Lip asks, with that teasing, cheeky sort of amusement in his voice that Luz always finds oddly sexy. He lets out a breath of laughter and closes his eyes, thinking he’ll never relax with Lip holding him like this in a church full of fellow soldiers –

\- but then he’s reminded of Lip grabbing him around the middle and yanking him to safety during the second barrage after their return to Bois Jacques, which reminds him of his attempts to convey what he’d just seen over the hellish thundering of explosions all around them, which reminds him of the dud in their foxhole and how Penk and Muck weren’t so lucky and he had visual confirmation of that fact, and it all brings him around to the conclusion that he deserves some time in quite possibly the most comforting, safest arms in the world.

“It’s alright, George,” Lip whispers, pressing his cheek against the top of Luz’s head, and Luz wonders if he did something else without noticing. Did he shudder, or tense up somehow? Regardless of the whys, he melts right against Lip’s solid chest at the sound of his reassurance, and he can actually feel the sigh of relief Lip lets out a moment later. “The curtain’s down for tonight. It’s alright for you to rest.”

The idea that someone sees and understands what he does as clearly as he does them – no, the _proof_ of it – offers the last bit of security it takes for him to fall sound asleep.


End file.
